Updating my Ginger Beer experiments: The first batch was less gingery than I like. I’ve doubled the amount of ginger I add per day to two teaspoons. I tried doubling it again to four, but the drink was more gingery but somehow less interesting, more like fizzy ginger than nice, tart ginger beer. So every […]

My mother used to make ginger beer. She got the recipe over fifty years ago, from – she believes – family friends the Goodsons, when we lived in Totton (near Southampton). I’ve tried many commercial ginger beers in England, none as good as what she made. Over here in the states, ginger beer is almost […]

It has to be at least a year since Snowflake (Woidat) took up residence in the dining room. In fact I think it’s over two, since I’m pretty sure she hasn’t been part of the feline family for as long as Parsley has been around. Until Saturday, when something strange happened. We’d already committed to […]

It’s that time again. We’re about to lose another cat, and as always it’s heartbreaking. Snowflake (aka “Woidat”) was a stray on the campus at Kodak in Richardson where Vicki was working. She was in pretty bad condition, and terrified of people. Vicki told me that she was going to try to catch the stray. […]

A few years ago I noticed I’d gotten email for Russell Brown at my email address. I figured it was just regular junk; I get more than enough misaddressed spam. But mail for Russell Brown (always addressed to RUSSELL BROWN in block caps) kept arriving, and I realized that it was all from travel companies. […]

I just got email from PayPal about their privacy practices. The email rings all alarm bells for being a phishing attempt. If I didn’t have relatively safe command-line tools to evaluate it, I wouldn’t have touched it. In an era where all personal data is on the line, when anti-fraud companies are warning everyone to […]

I’m not sure if I’m ready to write this, but I want to try before I forget too much. I delayed my birthday this year to Saturday June 6th because my wife was out of town until then. When my fake birthday arrived, she presented me with a gift that was completely unexpected – a […]

When I first came to the US, I didn’t consider that it would eventually become my home. After I took up residence here, I don’t think I ever quite believed it would be permanent. Even after I married, I think I assumed that sooner or later we’d move back to the UK. The more I […]

Today’s not a very interesting news day. There’s very little to glean anywhere other than the inauguration of President Obama. It’s an historic event, that an African-American has reached the highest office in the free world. And it is, there’s no question about that. But I can’t help feeling that the intense focus on the […]